Strictly’s new team: a structural problem with a person’s name on it

The glitterball swirled, the music swelled, my six year old squealed with excitement. Strictly is BACK!  And then we watched two and a half years hours of first dances hosted by a new team, in a new formation but still the same premise of amateurs learning from pros and being publicly judged through it.  My six year old LOVED it. My eight year old ADORED it. I…thought it was exactly the same as every episode of Strictly ever made.  But goodness me, the ‘great British public’, as represented by a wide range of media outlets, were howling with disappointment about the new team of presenters.

For those of you not forced to endure enjoy Strictly by your young family, the tldr of this that Emma Willis (who is a professional presenter), Josh Widdicombe (a comedian) and Johannes Radebe (a professional dancer still doing some dancing on the show) took over as hosts on 19 September, replacing Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, who left together after presenting together for over ten years.

What I find fascinating is that the entire premise of Strictly is that amateurs can get really good, really fast, if they are given enough coaching, support and time from professionals. And yet the two hosts who are new to this particular job are being granted none of that grace at all.

The brand new team are, inevitably, finding their feet. They have one really experienced presenter, Emma, who has been largely praised for doing a cracking job. Which just goes to show that, as in much of life, if you have done something a lot you are often better than people who have never done it before. Josh and Johannes are in week 1 of the live show.

I find the whole thing fascinating from a team development point of view too, because all three of them are being individually judged for what looks to me like a structural problem in the team design.

This is a brand new team that has had a brand new role added to it. Previously Claudia was upstairs with the dancers and Tess was downstairs on the ballroom floor. Roles were clear. Now there are two of them downstairs and as Emma, with grace and experience, stepped into the main anchor role, what is Josh there for? He’s being criticised as a ‘spare part’, when it looks to me like quite a common phase for a team to go through when a new role is added and it takes everyone has to work out how the work now needs to flow through and around it. It is a structural problem that is being blamed on a person. This is so common in teams and can so quickly become “that person isn’t any good” when in fact “that role hasn’t been very well defined so the person is being set up to fail”.

Josh is also interesting for another reason. While he has been on a lot of shows, and hosted plenty of them, his role has always been to be the product, the funny one that people have tuned in to see.  In Strictly he is there to almost do the opposite, to make other people shine, keep the show to time and do smooth links via an autocue. So while he has experience of hosting, it isn’t this kind of hosting.  How often do we promote someone on the strength of a track record that never tested the skills the new job actually needs?

Johannes, on the other hand is actually performing two roles. He’s still a dancer and also now has presenting responsibilities. This is so common when people get promoted from within, but until they are released from their old roles, it is very hard to fully inhabit the new ones.  I also get the sense that he is trying to redefine his relationship with the professional dancers when he is in ‘presenter mode’ which is different to being one of the dance team, which is a challenge many newly promoted managers will recognise.

And then there is the coordination challenge. Having three presenters rather than two makes the dance of who picks up a dropped line, who fills a silence, how you throw the ball between you all that bit more complicated. Especially hard when two of the team are still learning to catch.

We all know it takes time for new teams to gel, so this trio have my sympathy as they take their first steps together with millions of people watching and critiquing. Which brings me to this barrage of critical feedback they are getting.

The closer to an event that you give feedback, the more impact it has.  So if someone you are managing does a presentation and you want them to continue to do them in the future, you would be well advised to give them the positive feedback as soon as they sit down. They will then more likely associate the even with the praise so be motivated for the future. Then once things have calmed, have another conversation that tells them how to improve.  This is the opposite of what Josh and Johannes have faced. Imagine the first time you try something getting a slew of criticism in the national press.  Many of us would not turn up to work the next day and, if they come back on Saturday, then kudos to them.

And now the trap is that often when people get critical feedback mid-performance that start watching themselves do the job, at which point it is very hard to stay composed and present and which is exactly what comes over as nerves on the camera. It runs the risk of being a very vicious circle for Josh in particular.

So I hope there are people in BBC towers thinking hard about how to support this team. It was a long selection process, and it sounds like they tested chemistry in the audition room, but chemistry in an audition room and chemistry under live pressure are not the same animal. Again, how many of us have recruited a set of great individuals who took a year to work out how to make it work?

So, if I were with this new little team this week, here are a couple of things I would be doing.  I would get them to think through, in great detail all of the things that went really well and what they appreciate about working with each other. Beginning with what is working will help their brains calm down enough to be able to think again.     I would also be asking them:

• What do you think the role of a host is on the show ?  It is likely that they would have different answers, and that might help them gain more clarity.
• What do you want your roles to be? How can they support each other in that? Taking ownership and agency is an important step here.
• Lots of people have a view on whether this is working: how do you want to measure your success?
• What one thing they want to work on for next week and what one thing the other two could do to help them most. 

Finally, I would encourage them, and the rest of us, to stop measuring them against Tess and Claudia. Eleven years of Saturday nights together will make anyone look seamless. The better question is what these three want it to be like and what their version of Saturday nights could be.

With a bit of space, a bit of grace and a bit of Strictly magic, this team could be FAB-U-LOUS but they need the structure around them to be clear before they can shine.